Creating Epic Content like a Pro

By Sef
Posted On
Saturday, October 12, 2013
//

Content is everything nowadays in digital marketing. It has now become the primary weapon of each marketer to win the game in the modern SEO. Without content, you may find it hard to develop your website's online brand and presence and you may eventually give up promoting your website. But this should not be the case, since there are ways to create your own content that will help your audience learn more.

I don’t mean content as a normal content we usually see online but it is the content that is more competitive and well explained among the other existing content, in short, worth reading.

What does it mean?

It means, content that is well researched with supportive information backing up the article through resources.

It means, content that really provides everything that a reader has to know about the topic.

In this post, I will guide you through creating perfect content which can help you earn links organically that you deserve with actionable step by step method.

Creating the Headline

Right before internet was invented by computer scientists, news papers have been everywhere and each concerned citizen spends a lot of time reading what the daily news paper had to deliver on a particular day. With that being said, the competition has already started in every story inserted in a news paper, which headline gets the most attention by the reader will be read and win the game. And for those with less prominent headline, will obviously be ignored which is not good on the side of writer.

This issue is still remaining in fact. Until now, headlines pay a lot of contribution on how an article will succeed in its competition. Particularly in industry of SEO, I’m sure you will agree with me that most article ideas about SEO, link building, content marketing and social media marketing have already been several times by other bloggers/writers and only one that has got the best headline would be lucky to have more click through rate (CTR) and organic linking.

Finding Headline Ideas

Conduct a quick search in
Google about the topic that you are planning to write about to check what sort
of ideas have already been taken out by other people in your industry. By doing
this, you can then sort of identify which topic has not been covered yet so
that you can prepare yourself to write about it. Since the topic of this
article is about creating content, I will tell you how I got the title of this
post.

I just simply combined the top
four titles in SERP for the term “how
to write epic content” and played around with the words to come up with something better, I
would say. So everything starts with research, if you are planning to write
something to improve your online presence and reputation, make sure that you
conduct your own research to come up with something better that you can give to
your valuable readers.

Because if you present a crappy article, video or info-graphic to your
readers, chances that you might lose their trust is definitely high.

Creating your Sub headline

To make your content become
much appealing, sub headline is definitely important. Because in this way, your
audience can actually forsee what your article is about which will motivate
them to stay longer reading your article. But
keep in mind that you don’t want to drive away the attention and confuse your
readers with your sub headline so think of something like:

1. Self explanatory

2. Make sure that your sub
headline adds up value to your main headline.

3. Make sure that your sub
headlines provide more detail about the topic.

4. Make your sub headlines like
a road map.

Making the Body

Aside from the headline and sub
headline, another important factor you should focus on is the body of your
content, where your voice and message to your readers is being delivered. This
is where you should pay too much attention when you are writing about something,
because your expertise in your topic will be measured and judged by your
audience if your content is worth reading or just a waste of time.

Content Suggestion and Ideas

1. Make sure that you have a
clear and enough information in your article.

2. Make sure that you know
exactly what you are talking about.

3. Make sure that you will be
straight to the point explaining your insight, opinion and views in your body.

4. Make sure that your body is
full of fresh information that provides quality information to your readers.

5. Make sure that you proof
read the body of your content before publishing.

Resources

Having references in content
determines how well researched your article is, this tells your readers what
sort of exploration/study you have gone through to accomplish such a post. But
sometimes, some content don’t need to have references since the content on its
own is already worth reading, informative and high quality on its own such as
this blog. But in most cases, most content out there require
resources to support their statement and also for helping other content be
discovered by your readers, whether it is internal or external.

Finding your
resources

Internal link resources

You can actually start looking
for resources with your own published content, if you don’t want your readers
to be driven away from your website and you don’t feel like sharing your
readers to other related articles in your industry. But
keep in mind that whenever you put a link of your previous article, make sure
that:

1. It adds valuable information
to your article.

2. It is relevant to your article.

So for internal
resources, you can use your content asset or landing pages where most of your
publications related to your content are posted on to keep your readers
engaged.

External link resources

If you can’t find internal
resources, you can then search online for resources that you may want to use to
make your content more comprehensive and unique compare to others. Since we
want to make sure that the references will add more value to your content, you
can use site search to filter potential resources that you could use such as:

Forums: “your industry” + forums

Discussion Board: “your industry” + discussion
board

Weekly roundup: “weekly round-up” + “your keyword”

Online Libraries: inurl: .edu + “libraries” + “your
keyword”

Quoted statement

Another good source of resources
that you can use is the statements of influencers, experts and professionals in
your industry who made few statements that have been popular and used by other
people in your industry such as tweets or remarkable statement in their post.

You can find these
statements in articles they have written, tweets or even in comments they left
in articles, like the following:

Embedded presentation/info-graphic etc..

Another way of adding valuable
information to your article is by using of slides or info-graphics. Since
reading an entire article is quite boring, it would make sense to add one or
two presentation or info-graphic to quickly deliver your information in a
creative way like these:

Tips for creating slide presentation:

Limit your presentation to 30-50 slides.

Find the right images that you’re going to use.

Don’t write too much. Pictures have 100 stories to tell

Tips for creating info-graphics

Gather the necessary data.

Use tools like infogr.am or create.visual.ly

Think of
attractive headline

Funny Images

Fun never stops, as most
people say. At the end of the day, Most of us don’t want to stress out our
readers by reading our articles. So to keep them entertained, insert some funny
but related images to your topic such as meme. I know memes are popular these
days and if you can create one related to your topic, then you can put some
smile on your readers' faces which can help you make them share, promote, like
and comment on their own will. Sounds like a good tip?

Summary

Content is king. This is where
everything begins and if you suck at this, you can’t expect to get more
traffic, compete in your industry and most importantly, you can’t expect your
business to grow in terms of online reputation and visibility. So make sure
that your content is always a killer one and with proper and strategic onlinepromotion, you can sleep at well at night with a smile and be prepared to be
blown away by your traffic.

Joseph Gojo Cruzis the author ofRankingElite, aPhilippine-based Online Marketing
blog. Joseph has been working inSEOindustry for over 3 years fromwebsite audit,link and content development,social mediaandsearch
engine optimization. Connect with Joseph on Google+, Twitter,
and Facebook. Joseph is also a contributor
onSEJ
and Ahrefs.